"Speak No Evil"
by Justin R. R. Stebbins
Part 2: The Messengers
For the next several weeks, Whisper lived in the great stone box. That was what Whisper called it in her mind: the Box. She still had never seen a window or a door to the outside world. One room contained stairs leading down several floors, but there were none leading up. There was only a trap door on the roof far above, and none of the instructors ever opened it.
Her first task had been in the room below, which contained a labyrinth full of obstacles and traps. The children were sent into the maze to find a golden key. Whisper had immediately observed that the walls of the labyrinth did not reach all the way to the ceiling. Several others noticed this as well, but none of them could even hope to jump high enough to reach the edge, at least ten feet above.
Whisper did it almost without thinking. She found the widest corridor in the maze, ran toward the wall, took a few steps up the side of it, and grabbed the top. Then she pulled herself up. The upper edge was not even six inches wide, but she balanced on it easily, running lightly along and searching each corridor below. It wasn’t long before she spotted the key, retrieved it, and returned, without ever facing a trap.
Her instructors had mixed reactions.
There were only five of them, the strange men and women in the dark leather and red cloth. The leader was the Mother, who merely gave another of her mysterious nods when Whisper returned from the test. Whisper sensed that she was satisfied. The next in rank of importance seemed to be the dark-eyed man, Hanan al-Saffah. Everyone spoke of him with great respect. He just looked at Whisper with cold contempt. Willem, of course, smiled and laughed, congratulating her on her ingenuity. There was also another man, but Whisper saw little of him, and he never took his mask off.
And then, of course, there was Seona, the female elf. When Whisper beat the maze test, Seona just smiled smugly, looking around at the others to rub Whisper’s victory in their faces. Even this expression could not diminish her otherworldly beauty. Whisper ached to ask her about her people, the ‘Alfar,’ but as usual she could not summon the courage to speak.
She continued to curse herself about that, for she had not seen the elf since then. It had now been several weeks – Whisper had lost track of exactly how long – since she had been outside the Box. Over the course of that time, she had learned much, while also impressing her instructors with the skills she already possessed.
It was not a bad life, for a life in a box. At least no one would run her out of it, and she had plenty of food. Her bond with Shade had grown, though she continued to keep her distance from the other children as much as possible. She had also grown to like Willem, the kindly instructor who was always smiling. Though at first she had thought his kindness insincere, his continued good treatment of herself and the other students eventually won her over.
Worst of all was the dark-eyed man, Hanan al-Saffah. There was something in his eyes that made a chill run down Whisper’s spine. Today, he was to teach them more combat techniques. The children always carried blunt wooden knives now, tucked in their belts or shoes if they had any, or else on a bit of string slung over their shoulder or around their waist. The instructors had taught them how to use the daggers to ‘silence’ watchmen, even ones wearing armor. At first, Whisper had found it a little unsettling, but she had been abused by the city watch on many occasions, and had more than once wished she could defend herself.
“I hate Hanan,” Whisper said to Shade as they headed toward the main room for their training.
“Yeah…” Shade replied, with a shrug, “but I can deal with him. The others are great. Willem’s been showin’ me how to throw knives so the pointy end hits instead of the back! That’s a lot better than learning how to sew.”
“You’ve stolen a day’s meal with your sewn pockets,” Whisper said quietly. “I don’t know how throwing a knife is going to get you a day’s meal…”
Shade didn’t seem to hear her; he just went on: “It’s great here, isn’t it? I think I’ve eaten more this week than I’ve eaten the whole rest of my life, and they say if we finish our training we get to go to their real base, where there’s food fit for kings!”
“They won’t tell us who they’re training us to fight…” Whisper muttered.
“Willem said they fight who they’re paid to fight, like mercenaries. It’s like being a soldier, but working for yourself and not some fat rich king!”
At length they joined the rest of the children seated in the great Box, waiting for lessons to begin. The only instructor present was al-Saffah. He sat cross-legged on the raised platform, at the feet of the Mother’s chair, watching them with his black eyes. The room was utterly silent, until one boy, whose continued good performance in the combat trials had perhaps bolstered his courage, spoke up.
“Are you from the Far South?” he asked Hanan. “I knew a merchant from a place called Desrit once. I liked him. He sold dates. Used to give me a free one to eat every day.”
Al-Saffah let the echoes of the boy’s voice die awkwardly in the vast Box, before he finally deigned to look down at him and reply: “The place is called Deshret. And I am no seller of dates.”
After another long moment of silence, Hanan at last leapt softly down from the platform. With a wave of his hands, he instructed the children to form a ring, leaving the central space open. This was where he would train them to fight.
“Today we’re going to do something different,” he said, his voice as flat and emotionless as ever. “When we finally send you out on a real task, in the real world, you will usually work in pairs. You should know your partner well. Everyone choose your partner now.”
Whisper and Shade exchanged glances. They were already sitting together, so they did not move. The others knew not to ask them. They were well-known to be a team.
Once everyone had selected a partner and settled down again, Hanan’s unsettling eyes locked straight onto Whisper, and he said, “You two. Step forward.”
For a second Whisper sat frozen, hoping that he had meant someone else. But Shade quickly stood, glancing down at her with slight annoyance on his face. She swallowed her fear and joined him in the ring.
Hanan glanced between the two of them. “You two are friends.”
It was more of a statement than a question, but they both nodded.
“I’m sure you each think you know the other quite well. You think you know your friend’s strengths and weaknesses. But you’ll find you still have a lot to learn. Draw your daggers. The two of you will fight until one delivers a killing blow.”
Whisper’s eyes went wide. She reluctantly reached for her wooden blade, but Shade had already drawn his and was turning to face her. He gave her a shrug and dropped into a defensive position.
Whisper kept her eyes on Shade, for she didn’t want to meet Hanan’s dark gaze, even as she asked him: “But why would we need to know how to fight each other?”
“To learn,” replied Hanan, “and because I told you to. Now fight.”
Shade immediately made a clumsy attempt at a surprise attack, which Whisper dodged almost by reflex. Shade did not relent. He continued stabbing and slashing, swinging wildly at her, as she ducked under and sidestepped and leapt away from each attack. He only grew more furious as she led him around the ring. It was slightly terrifying, but Whisper kept her cool, stepping always lightly away, as if it were a dance.
At last Shade slowed down, panting for breath. Whisper suddenly realized she could beat him easily. All she had to do was keep avoiding his attacks, and he would tire himself out. Then she could move in with ease, and defeat him with one or two quick strikes. But one look at Shade’s blazing blue eyes made her hesitate. His eyes were overflowing with pride and determination. He did not want to lose. If she humiliated him here in front of everyone, he might never forgive her.
She had to let him win but make it look like he had really beaten her. She moved in for a clumsy lunge, which he blocked with a swipe of his arm. He used the opening to stab at her with his wooden blade, but she rolled away. Once back on her feet, she dropped into a defensive pose, waiting for him to resume the attack.
“Enough of this farce,” said Hanan al-Saffah.
He waded into the ring, grabbing Shade from behind. In the blink of an eye, the boy was disarmed and face-down on the floor. Then Hanan advanced on Whisper, wielding Shade’s wooden knife. He took a stab at her, which she dodged while trying to strike his throat. He ducked under her attack and slashed open her stomach. Then he grabbed her arm, twisting it painfully, and pinned her to the ground.
“Had this been a real dagger, your guts would be spilled over the floor,” he said, driving his knee into her back. “You went straight for my throat, I noticed. That was smart. You should have been that smart with your little friend, instead of trying to let the blundering fool beat you.”
He grabbed her ponytail in his fist and jerked her head back, stretching out her long pale throat, over which he ran the wooden blade. Then the knife went up to her ears. She felt the cold wood run along each one, all the way to the pointed tip.
“Do you know how I would kill you, girl? First I would cut off these ears and show them to you. Then I might slit your throat, all the way from the stub of one ear to the other. Or perhaps I would strangle you.” Here he threw down the wooden knife, and she felt his black-gloved fingers caress her neck. “I usually prefer to leave a clean body, so that whoever finds it wonders if you are only sleeping… until they draw close enough to see the truth. Perhaps I’d leave one ear for them to find. I’d keep the other as a memento.”
Whisper had been trying not to scream, but she could take it no longer. Just when she was about to cry out, a familiar old woman’s voice came from the direction of the raised platform. The voice was not loud, yet all fell silent to heed her words.
“Release her,” the Mother said.
Hanan let Whisper go and pushed her to the floor. She rolled to one side to absorb the impact, then rolled quickly back to her feet. She looked around at all the staring faces, especially Shade’s. Thankfully, he did not look angry with her for trying to let him win. His eyes only showed fear and pity.
The Mother said, “Is this how you treat your students when I am not present, Hanan? Some of these children are your future brothers and sisters.”
“You haven’t met my real sister,” Hanan said, and left it at that.
The Mother seemed to pretend not to hear that response. “Bring Whisper and Shade to my quarters. It is time.”
Hanan did not have to say anything; Whisper and Shade were eager to follow the old woman and escape more of al-Saffah’s brand of training. The Mother led them out of the main “Box” and into the stairwell. Whisper had been to the floor below, which contained the labyrinth used for many of the training exercises, but the Mother led them even lower, down another flight of stairs. They entered a narrow hallway lined with closed doors.
Whisper got the distinct impression that they were now underground. There was no way to be sure, as there were still no windows anywhere. It was probably just her imagination, but she started breathing shallow anyway, as if they might run out of air. She hated being underground.
The Mother unlocked one of the doors and waved them inside.
The room was nicely furnished, compared to the ones above. It contained a long mahogany table surrounded by tall-backed chairs. There were even some pictures on the walls, paintings of noble men and women, some clad in very exotic clothing. A great iron-bound chest sat at the far end of the room, bound with a heavy lock.
“The paintings are Willem’s,” the Mother said, with a wave of a black-gloved hand. “He fancies himself an artist. So does Hanan, but in another way. He views killing as an art.”
“The highest art,” said Hanan al-Saffah, who had slipped into the room behind them.
“Did we fail?” asked Shade, trying to mask the shame and fear from his voice.
“Quite the contrary, actually,” said the Mother with a thin smile. “We are going to welcome you into the family… right after you perform one essential task.”
At last, Whisper spoke: “You want us to kill someone.”
Hanan al-Saffah gave a guttural chuckle. “Clever girl.”
Just then, the other instructors entered the room. None of them sat down in the chairs. They just gathered around the two children, smiling. Willem leaned against a wall. Seona perched herself on the corner of the table, one long leg dangling as she twirled a knife expertly between her fingers.
“Now what,” said Willem, as he munched an apple, “makes you think we want you to kill someone?”
Whisper did not return their smiles. “You’re training us to break into houses, climb walls, avoid guards, sneak up on people…”
“And kill them,” the Mother finished for her. “Yes, you’ve worked it out. It’s very simple really. On occasion, a man is marked for death. Some of us like to say they’re marked by the gods, or by fate, but I don’t care for such mysticism. They are marked by men. Let us say, for example, that a young girl stands to inherit a kingdom. A rival family with claim to her crown threatens to go to war over it. Thousands will die in the conflict, thousands more will suffer. The noble girl’s family does not care, even if the common folk riot, clamoring for them to relent and give the throne to their rivals. So to avoid all of that needless destruction… someone comes to us.”
Whisper stared into the old woman’s eyes, not speaking. Shade glanced between the two pairs of eyes – the bright green and pale blue. Neither the girl or the old woman flinched. The silence was only broken when Willem took another bite of his apple. The Mother looked annoyed. Suddenly, one of her arms shot up, and a dagger flew out, straight into Willem’s apple. The fruit was launched out of his hand and pinned to the wall by the blade.
“Don’t eat in the council room,” said the Mother.
“So,” Shade said, “you… want us to kill the girl?”
The Mother laughed, leaning back in her chair. “No, child, I don’t want you to kill anyone. And everything I just told you was hypothetical – made up. We were hired to kill a young girl from a very wealthy family,” and here she drew out and unfurled a small scroll, “but we do not know why. This is the contract, but it states no reasons. We are only messengers. We do not ask what the message is, what it means, what purpose it serves. We merely deliver it: the silent message of death.”
“We can’t read anyway…” Shade said.
The Mother smiled. “Well, that is something else we’ll have to fix.”
“This is the girl,” said Willem, presenting a small painting – clearly by his own hand – of a blond-haired child in a white dress. “She lives in a manor at the corner of Gold Way and Wallshadow, overlooking the slums from the heights of the Silver Ring.”
“We don’t expect you to do the deed, of course,” the Mother said. “We are the professionals.”
Willem smiled. “We can make her death completely painless, like falling asleep.”
“It will be beautiful,” said Hanan al-Saffah, his dark eyes staring into nothingness as he pictured the scene, “a life snuffed out in the greenest spring of youthful innocence. Her father will return to find her asleep in her room, without a mark on her body. Only when he tries to wake her will he find the blade. It won’t be in her, of course. Too straightforward. Perhaps in a bedpost, or in the mattress beside her. But the effect will be the same. He will get the Message.”
“’Tis a sad thing,” said Willem, “but it must be done.”
“The sadder the work of art,” said Hanan, “the more poignant. This will be a masterpiece.”
Whisper felt horrified at this exchange, but the words of the elf woman, Seona, stung her the most: “Youthful innocence… pfah. Six years old or sixty; what’s the difference? Mortals are all children, next to the Alfar, passing like leaves in autumn.”
The room fell silent then. Willem and Hanan were exchanging glances, shaking their heads at Seona’s comment, but the elf ignored them, keeping her frosty-haired head pointed high. Whisper found that she was shaking all over, whether with fear or anger, or nausea, she was not sure. She saw to her relief that Shade was trembling as well.
“All you will need to do,” the mother clarified at length, “is open a door. You will not witness the deed. You will simply open a door, to let us in. But we’ll give you more details about that later. For now, I’ll let you get some rest. Tomorrow, your real work begins.”
The old woman left then, and the others filed out behind her, leaving the two children standing there in a daze. Willem was the last to go, but he paused when he heard Whisper speak softly.
“I can’t believe you’d murder a child,” she said.
Willem realized the message was for him. He paused and turned back, looking at them with his usual kindly smile, which Whisper now saw as condescending.
“I understand how you feel right now,” he said, “but it’s not really all that bad.”
He sighed, looking at the doorway and at the room around them. Then he seemed to make up his mind about something and took a painting down off the wall. He crouched down on his toes in front of them and held up the picture. It was an image of an old man dressed in fine clothing, his face pale and worn with wrinkles.
“This is my father,” Willem said. “Of course, he never really dressed like this. I grew up in a little town near the wild northern border of the Empire – a place called Eloh. Some people say ‘Ay-loh,’ but all the locals call it ‘Ee-loh.’ Anyway, my father was a miner. He worked his hands to the bone every day for us, but we barely saw him even once a month. He was pale, bent, stunted, and half-blind from working in the cramped mining tunnels. He never went out when the sun was shining. He died at age thirty. I barely knew him… and I swore I would never live like him.”
“So you became an assassin?” Shade asked.
“Oh, it’s never that simple. I started stealing, a lot like you… and then they found me, a lot like you. It’s just a job – a good job. Your partners watch your back, it pays well, and you can do what you want. I’ve discovered that my true passion is art, and now I’m free to pursue it. This is one I painted of my father as he should have lived, if all things were equal…”
His voice trailed off there. At length he stood up, replaced the picture, and headed for the door. As he left, he looked back at them one last time.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It will get easier.”
When he was gone, Whisper turned away from Shade, leaning against the table and staring at the floor. Shade reached out to comfort her, but hesitated and let his hand drop. He sat down in one of the chairs at the table, silently thinking. For a few moments, the world was deathly quiet. There didn’t seem to be a sound that could permeate the walls of the Box. The City itself could be burning outside, and they would never hear of it. If they were even in the City…
Eventually, Shade shrugged, slid out of the chair, and stood up.
“I don’ know,” he said, his voice full of that familiar false confidence. “Maybe Willem’s right. Stupid rich girl, sleepin’ every day on her feather bed while we sleep on rags in the gutter… The wench prob’ly has it coming.”
Whisper’s head shot up, and her green eyes, glistening with tears, looked daggers at him. Without a word, she stormed out of the room, slamming the heavy door behind her.
Through the halls she ran, up the stairs to the main floor. She slowed down then, to avoid drawing attention, as she slipped through the other kids and headed for the sleeping quarters. Once there, she threw herself down on her bed and hid under the sheet, trying to block out the world.
Only one thought kept repeating in her mind: She had to escape.